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For almost a year now, the gaming world has eagerly anticipated the arrival of the next-generation wave of first-person shooters. These new games would finally begin to take advantage of the powerful graphical features that hardware companies have been incorporating into their video cards to deliver unprecedented visuals. But while we're still waiting to see the fruits of the labors of storied developers like id Software and Valve, Crytek, a relatively obscure German developer, has managed to beat everyone to the punch with Far Cry. In fact, Crytek almost delivers a knockout blow. Far Cry isn't just a stunning technical accomplishment. It's quite possibly the best single-player first-person shooter experience for the PC since Half-Life.

Welcome to the jungle.

In Far Cry, you play as Jack Carver, a guy who's been hired to sail a mysterious woman around the Pacific. However, Jack's ship suddenly comes under attack. After washing ashore on a tropical island, sans the mysterious woman, Carver must investigate his surroundings so that he can find her and eventually rescue her from an army of heavily armed mercenaries. From this point, you'll delve into a story that combines the epic adventure of Half-Life with the bizarreness of The Island of Dr. Moreau, along with a good, healthy mix of Jurassic Park-style tropical island creepiness. You'll explore facilities worthy of Half-Life's Black Mesa, battle it out with brutally tough opponents, and assault a volcano stronghold in a James Bond-inspired finale that also offers a nightmarish vision of hell.

Without a doubt, Far Cry has the most advanced graphics seen in any PC game to date. Everything in this game looks amazing, and the level of verisimilitude is unprecedented. Jungles actually feature dense foliage that consists of trees, plants, and tall grasses, and this foliage is filled with birds and insects. Beaches have blinding-white sand, and the surf slowly laps ashore. The character models are some of the best we've ever seen in such a game, and they're richly detailed and animated. The game also incorporates real-time lighting and shading effects to a degree rarely seen before, so when you walk in the jungle, you actually see the shadows of overhead leaves flickering on your rifle. In some of the larger indoor levels, the shadows of oncoming opponents are projected in larger-than-life form onto walls. Intense heat blur from lava streams distort the atmosphere. And a near miss from an enemy rocket will black out your vision--as if you got the wind knocked out of you. You can't help but be pulled in by the sheer immersiveness of the game.